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Yes, because the PC has never had to have day-zero patches pushed by Steam or anything like that.

Not disputing that PC gaming has gotten easier in recent times but picking out an incident like that and claiming it's a major failure of consoles is drawing a long bow. At least consoles can actually get patches these days!

From my own experience though, and from reading through the comments on that link, it's far from being an isolated incident. In days of yore, the main draw of consoles over PCs was their convenience and almost-instant gratification. I think we can all agree that that's no longer a dividing issue. MMO's and their astounding patches aside, I've not suffered from anything like that in recent years on my PC.

I don't bear any particular ill-will towards consoles or their users, and I currently have six of the buggers sitting under my tv myself. My current PC boots up in only a couple more seconds than an XBox (Thanks SSDs), plugs into my TV via a handy HDMI cable, and uses wireless XBox360 pads via the Crossfire receiver.

It's pretty safe to say that with a setup like that, (A setup that's becoming increasingly common in homes everywhere) the only reason I need to (or want to) actually use a console at all is for licensing purposes, which is something I reckon is fair to feel at least a little resentful about. In fact, I'm fairly confident that there's a good chance that the next generation of consoles might well be the final generation.

Yep. Steam don't sell games, sells convenience. Truckloads of it. To a point that you can have more convenience that with a console. But the difference is in implementation. Seems consoles don't have background updating!. As a result, you either update a game, or use the console, you can't do both. Some Game dev can make a update and push it in a day or two. While with consoles theres this certification process that is expensive and slow and don't stop bugs ( everything on a console is certified, but bugs still exists).

Honestly the only thing I care about is the price with all the Steam sales. I don't / didn't mind patching things myself (or having a game with an auto-updater)...I can see how some people would like the auto updates and community features but all I actually care about these days is the prices (if it wasn't for those, I think I would buy many more things in delicious, tangible boxes).

Edit: And if you have those delicious tangible boxes, being able to swap the physical disk between computers so my and my brothers could all play at the same time off a single copy was another great positive thing for me (not possible with a console, even if you have multiples consoles you'd need multiple copies...or at least you would in the olden days).

i would never even think about or buy bethesda's games without the excellent mod community surrounding it

i mean frankly if i have to sit through some sixty hours of tedious shit writing and combat mechanics that suck to complete a game, i want my level 12 half-orc male adventurer to be wearing a french maid dress and batting down the imperial guard with a lightsaber.

i would never even think about or buy bethesda's games without the excellent mod community surrounding it

i mean frankly if i have to sit through some sixty hours of tedious shit writing and combat mechanics that suck to complete a game, i want my level 12 half-orc male adventurer to be wearing a french maid dress and batting down the imperial guard with a lightsaber.

Or, of course, you could bugger off and play something you like? I've put a good few hundred hours into unmodded Bethesda games. Why? Mostly because I don't want my character to have EE cup jugs, a thong and to cause a potentially unstable game to crash even more.

It isn't that I can use a mouse and keyboard. It's that I can use mouse and keyboard, gamepad, joystick, motion controls or steering wheel.

You can't deny that some games are better suited to a certain device, which is why some will say some games are better on a console, but a PC can use any control scheme with ease.

Only if it's ported well, Vandelay. I've noticed some games are much better overall with a controller - The First Templar, Arkham Asylum, LEGO Star Wars, possibly Fable 3 - whereas some have just aspects that work better with a controller, such as GTA IV's absolutely abysmal helicopter controls. Flying them on the KB and mouse requires some ridiculous level of added arms and digits, whereas with the controller it's much easier albeit not perfect. Alone in the Dark (5) was so badly ported that the control pop-ups were in relation to the controller, and the KB+M controls were just abysmal anyway.

For strategy games, RPGs, shooters, etc., the PC really does come up tops. But for racing games, platformers and some other games, my trusty 360 controller does a perfect job.

Not disputing that PC gaming has gotten easier in recent times but picking out an incident like that and claiming it's a major failure of consoles is drawing a long bow. At least consoles can actually get patches these days!

One interesting aspect of that though is that Microsoft / Sony limit how many patches can be released before the devs have to pay for them, so there's a certain aspect of whether or not it's actually worth fixing. Although since both also do some QA testing prior to letting you release the game it mitigates the issue somewhat.

From my own experience though, and from reading through the comments on that link, it's far from being an isolated incident.

Having played a 360 and PS3 I can say that the frequency of patches has increased but 600MB monsters aren't common, at least in my experience. It's no different from Steam forcing you to download an update prior to launching the game. The "outcry" comes from console gamers who... well, have no idea what they're talking about. At least console games can actually get patches, unlike the old days when bugs were stuck in the game, end of story.

Originally Posted by thegooseking

The fact that the same games also work on lower-end systems and usually just don't look as nice is a massive thing in favour of the PC, though.

That's true, but at the same time if your PC plays something at 640x480 with everything on low, it's hardly an enjoyable experience. It's good that games can scale for lower end hardware but (at least in my opinion, and if hardware sales are anything to go by plenty agree) there comes a point where the scaling is largely pointless and the gameplay experience is negatively affected. I mean playing DX:HR in super-low would be a pretty horrible experience.

The fact that consoles come in pretty much one variety (minor things like HDDs notwithstanding) is in some ways a benefit because you know that you're going to get the same gameplay experience as everybody else with zero effort.

Or, of course, you could bugger off and play something you like? I've put a good few hundred hours into unmodded Bethesda games. Why? Mostly because I don't want my character to have EE cup jugs, a thong and to cause a potentially unstable game to crash even more.

yes i am an advocate of all the mods that have EE cup jugs

look, i understand that there's a lot of work and care put into this, but i don't want to work through 'generic dragonquest fantasy setting' just to see what kinds of cool stuff there is

if i have to fix the game's setting to make it less boring then something has gone wrong in the world building department.

When it comes to hardware PC's are just way stronger, sadly developers rarely use it's full power;

When they use it and release games with a brand new graphical engine, based on directx10-11, devs are greeted with an army of whiners who don't understand why someone wants them to upgrade their 10 years old system.
Even if this is becoming less of an issue with the rise of Windows 7 (and the fact that XP is not for sale anymore), you will always find people complaining.

Or like for Magicka, countless forum topics complaining that the game won't work with their Intel GPU.

The closer interaction between developers and gamers is a great advantage of the PC platform, but it's also the source of countless self-entitled whiners. You have to be strong to be a game dev and read your Steam forum.

Having played a 360 and PS3 I can say that the frequency of patches has increased but 600MB monsters aren't common, at least in my experience. It's no different from Steam forcing you to download an update prior to launching the game. The "outcry" comes from console gamers who... well, have no idea what they're talking about. At least console games can actually get patches, unlike the old days when bugs were stuck in the game, end of story.

Oh, but it is different, because Steam doesn't wait until the very second I want to play the game to go through with this patching process, unlike the consoles. True enough, most console updates are quick affairs, so it's not a huge disability, (except for in those rare cases when it is, such as forced firmware updates, and the rare epic patch) but my point isn't about how much of an advantage PCs have over consoles.

My point is that consoles are actually starting to fall behind PCs in those respects, which is a direct counter-point to the old adage that "consoles are there for people who just want to turn the thing on and play", a classic argument in the olden days of PC/Console rivalry.

In fact, with a decent PC set-up all of those old arguments ("convenience", "speed", "sofa", "social", "joypads") are no longer relevant, leaving only the single remaining issue of "price", which is mostly subjective, depending on how much monetary value you find in gaming. Oh, and of course there's still the issue of "console exclusives", which is the only damn reason I personally own a console. (More than one, in fact.)

When they use it and release games with a brand new graphical engine, based on directx10-11, devs are greeted with an army of whiners who don't understand why someone wants them to upgrade their 10 years old system.

"I don't get it; my computer could play WoW just fine...!"

NalanoH. Wildmoon
Director of the Friends of Nalano PAC
Attorney at Lawl
"His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy." - Woody Allen

I think ten years is a bit of an exaggeration, my current computer is six years old and has no chance at running modern games without some serious alterations, despite being top of the range for its time. PC hardware just moves so fast, it seems like there’s revolutionary new tech (especially the graphics cards) out every few months.

Or like for Magicka, countless forum topics complaining that the game won't work with their Intel GPU.

Except that Magicka ran quite crappy on non-intel GPUs, too. It doesn't look that advanced, graphically, but for some reason it just fails to perform well. I've always thought that it was the shadows that are rendered on everything and that can't be turned off. Some of their models are probably a bit too detailed, as well.

The best thing about PC gaming? The fact that you can write code for it and distribute said code, without anyone stopping you from either executing the code or distributing it (provided that you have the required licenses, of course, but that's rarely a problem if you pick & choose the libraries you use). There's nothing quite like playing some great game and realizing that everything you're running, from the OS down to the window manager down to the game you're playing, is available for Free in source and binary form because some random guy thought it would be cool to release all his hard work for Free.

Except that Magicka ran quite crappy on non-intel GPUs, too. It doesn't look that advanced, graphically, but for some reason it just fails to perform well. I've always thought that it was the shadows that are rendered on everything and that can't be turned off. Some of their models are probably a bit too detailed, as well.

It also doesn't work with Microsoft Sidewinder mice, at least it didn't when I tried it and it was a known issue. Seems a bit ironic considering it was written with XNA.